Supplemental: Luxury speedboat meets fancy hotel!

We’ve been asking career liberal journalists to push back against the New York Times—more specifically, against the famous newspaper’s low-grade campaign coverage.

Yesterday, we got what we wished for. An array of liberals chided the Times—for its negative front-page coverage of Candidate Rubio!

We also criticized the Times for that front-page report. In various ways, we thought it was very poorly reported and reasoned, which is pretty much the norm with this newspaper’s campaign work.

We focused on some obvious points, skipped past several others.

That said, we’ve also been trying to call attention to the horrible front-page work being done by the Times and the Washington Post concerning You Know Who and her greedy husband, who has been conducting “shakedowns” of swimsuit models and flying into Kazakhstan on private jets he wasn’t actually on.

When it comes to campaign coverage, the New York Times is a terrible paper. Its campaign reporting is often dumbfoundingly bad.

Due to the paper’s famous “brand,” it’s hard for people to come to terms with how bad its reporting actually is. Again and again, campaign reporting by the Times is just dumbfoundingly bad.

This week, a bunch of liberals noted this fact, but only when the famous newspaper criticized Candidate Rubio. When the Post and the Times have published gong-show reports about Candidate Clinton, our liberal journalists have tended to stand around gazing off into air.

It may have started with Chris Hayes. On Tuesday, the front-page report about Candidate Rubio made its debut on-line. Hayes posted a semi-joking tweet saying this:

Starting to think Rubio has some plant in the NYT and these supposed “hit-jobs” on him are false flags made to make him look sympathetic.

Glenn Greenwald and Matt Yglesias responded with similar thoughts.

Last night, Hayes made it official. He devoted a segment on his cable program to the Times’ recent coverage of the Republican darling.

As he started the segment, Hayes mocked the Times’ apparent confusion about what a “luxury speedboat” is. After that, he mentioned the earlier clownish report in the Times about Rubio’s traffic tickets.

Hayes said he thought the Times’ new report about Candidate Rubio was “not just a nothing-burger [but] a weirdly kind of snobby judgmental nothing-burger in tone.”

Does Candidate Rubio have a problem with over-spending? We couldn’t much tell from the Times report. Hayes said he doesn’t much care:

HAYES (6/10/15): The story predictably kicked off a major backlash against The Times, in part because it came on the heels of another Times piece criticizing Rubio and his wife for having gotten a combined, between the two of them, 17 traffic citations over 18 years, which most people didn’t think sounded so bad.

Rubio himself only had four citations.

Now, Rubio successfully fund-raised off the New York Times stories, casting himself as a relatable man of the people who struggled with student loans and asking supporters to, quote, “Help Marco fight back against the elitist liberal media.”

It was almost enough to make me wonder if the Florida senator has a plant at the paper of record churning out ostensible hit pieces really designed to make him look good.

All right, I am in the—I was basically found myself in strange company in the wake of this piece, because I was basically in the “this is a nothing-burger,” and not just a nothing-burger, a weirdly kind of snobbily judgmental nothing-burger in tone. You think it is legit?

A few parts of the Times report certainly were legit. For the most part, the piece was so incompetently reported that it was very hard to know what to think about its claims and insinuations.

The sheer incompetence of the reporting is typical of the Times’ campaign work. It’s hard for people to grasp this fact. But the New York Times just isn’t a competent newspaper.

That said, the analysts savagely tore their hair as they watched the Hayes segment last night. The “luxury speedboat” report was a blip on the screen compared to the poisonous front-page reports the Times has dropped on Candidate Clinton.

Hayes has had nothing to say about those front-page reports.

Check that! In late April, the Times did a sprawling, 4400-word front-page report about a scary uranium deal which was supposed to involve Candidate Clinton in some sort of treason or something.

The reporting was several miles beyond “terrible.” Assuming even minimal competence, the piece almost seemed a bit dishonest.

Unfortunately, Hayes did have something to say about that. That night, he described the piece as a “bombshell report,” vouching for the Times’ reporting.

Hayes chided the Times for its Rubio piece, vouched for the hit piece on Clinton! This is almost a parody of the way the liberal world has proceeded over the past twenty years.

Regarding the Times, it’s hard to overstate the poverty of its reporting techniques. Just consider the “luxury speedboat” and before it, the “Ford F-150 sports utility vehicle” the Times placed Rubio’s wife in.

As it turned out, that “luxury speedboat” from Wednesday’s report wasn’t a luxury speedboat at all. It was a more plebian fishing boat.

Similarly, the Ford F-150 isn’t an SUV. It’s a pick-up truck. (The Times has corrected its initial reporting regarding the F-150.)

These could be the types of errors the Times routinely makes. On the other hand, they could be the types of “errors” the Times often seems to make. Case in point:

That “luxury speedboat” made us recall a certain “fancy hotel.” We refer to the “fancy hotel” the mainstream press kept insisting that Candidate Gore had grown up in.

That completely accidental standard mistake went like this:

All across the mainstream press, reporters knew that the old Fairfax Apartment Hotel hadn’t been a “fancy hotel.” They also knew that it wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton, a second claim which was commonly made during the war against Gore.

Why did they keep saying that Gore had grown up in a “fancy hotel,” even in the Ritz? We can’t answer that question. Presumably, though, the propaganda advantage of these “mistakes” would have been apparent to all.

Who knows? This could explain why the New York Times put Candidate Rubio into that “luxury speedboat” in yesterday’s front-page report.

(Do you feel certain they wouldn’t do that? Who’s being naïve now, Kay?)

During Campaign 2000, the liberal world sat silently by as Candidate Gore was constantly placed in the “fancy hotel.” By way of contrast, several liberals were eager to speak when Candidate Rubio was placed in that “luxury speedboat” this week.

We agree with their complaints about yesterday’s front-page Rubio piece. Concerning attacks on You Know Who, the liberal world has been rather silent.

The reign of the fancy hotel: After the Gores had left their small apartment at the old Fairfax Apartment Hotel, the building was sold and completely refurbished. Eventually, it was reopened as a Ritz Carlton.

From that point on, it actually was a “fancy hotel.” That said, the Gores were no longer there.

Reporters kept making their honest mistakes as they conducted their war against Gore. They kept talking about the “fancy hotel” where Mr. Know-It-All grew up. Some of them even said that Gore had grown up at the Ritz! According to the Maureen Dowd script, “Prince Albert grew up as the capital’s version of Eloise at the Plaza.”

We discussed this till we were blue in the face. Career liberal “journalists” chose silence. The guild had cast Bush as the plain-spoken fellow who had grown up among the proles.

The liberal world put up with that crap every step of the way. Plain-spoken Candidate Bush ended up in the White House.

Are we planning to do that again? In certain very familiar ways, the table is being set.

Why would anyone expect Chris Hayes, a gentry liberal, to say anything even mildly favorable about Hillary Clinton? He probably supports Bernie Sanders, and if the NYT wants to smear Clinton, that's fine with him, I'm guessing. That he would be more skeptical of bad reporting on a Republican tells you all you need to know about him. He's no journalist and will never behave like a professional journalist anymore than the hacks at the Times.

Chris Hayes was a baby when Reagan was elected to his firt term. He was a young child when Clinton won his first term. He was obviously severely traumatized by the 8 year great hunt for Clinton's cock.

And since no one watches his nightly snooze fest, I don't know why it matters. The supposedly liberal columnists at the.NYT AND Wa Po are the ones who should be crying foul on their own newspapers. THAT would get attention.

"horrible front-page work being done by the Times ...concerning You Know Who and her greedy husband, who has been... flying into Kazakhstan on private jets he wasn’t actually on.

New York Times 1/31/2008:

Mr. Giustra was invited to accompany the former president to Almaty just as the financier was trying to seal a deal he had been negotiating for months.

In separate written responses, both men said Mr. Giustra traveled with Mr. Clinton to Kazakhstan, India and China to see first-hand the philanthropic work done by his foundation."

Bloomberg News 2/22/2008

"On June 21, 2005, Bill Clinton flew to Mexico City aboard a private jet that belonged to a Canadian investment banker he was meeting for the first time.-----

Three months after Clinton and Giustra met, they traveled around the world together on a trip that included a stop in Kazakhstan where Clinton introduced Giustra, who was closing in on a $425 million mining investment there, to the Central Asian country's leader. Giustra made millions on that deal.

Clinton Foundation Comments

``Mr. Giustra has publicly stated the philanthropic reasons for his contributions,'' Ben Yarrow, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, said in an e-mail when asked for comment on Clinton's use of the Giustra plane. ``Any suggestion to the contrary is baseless.''

Perhaps that Bob has Clinton on a different plane than Giustragoing to Afghanistan when the New York Times got it in writing from both of them that they were travelling together, Bloomberg printed the same facts and Clinton disputed neither report.

I don't know. Neither do you. Neither does Bob. None of us were there at the time.

I do know that the New York Times reported that they had written responses from both Clinton and Giustra that they travelled together to Kazakhstan before they reported them doing so.

I do know after the report was made in January 2008 Clinton did not dispute it. I do know Blumberg reported the same thing a month later. I do know Blumberg reported more extensively at that time on Mr. Clinton's use of Mr. Giustra's jet and that the Clinton foundation was given the opportunity to respond and did not dispute anything beyond a generalassertion that there was anything wrong with Mr, Clinton taking free rides.

The manifests listing passengers that were presented for the flight Clinton was supposedly on (but clearly wasn't) is proof enough for me.

Beyond that, it doesn't matter what plane he flew on because there is nothing wrong with him flying, no matter how he got there (private plane, commercial airline), and no evidence of any crime or moral wrongdoing or impropriety or quid pro quo, or anything else. So this is all garbage.

Somerby's point was that an error that was corrected via the evidence of the flight manifest should have been corrected in the later version of the NY Times report, not perpetuated, because such errors are how attacks on candidates gain steam and become damaging to them during campaigns.

You keep ignoring that issue and insisting that the NY Times was factually correct when they were not.

No one cares whether Clinton argued with the NY Times (which isn't his M.O.) to correct the record at the time. No one cares what the Foundation did or didn't say. This is another non-issue that you keep arguing because it creates the appearance of wrongdoing on Clinton's part.

So shut up about this and go away. You are annoying people and interfering with discussion.

"The manifests listing passengers that were presented for the flight Clinton was supposedly on (but clearly wasn't) is proof enough for me."

No manifests were ever presented for the flight Clinton was supposedly on. There was one report in 2009 that a columnist for Forbes who was the brother of a Private Investigator previously employed by Clinton saw a manifest of a flight into Kazakhstan a few days before Clinton arrived that had Frank Giustra and a Clinton advance man aboard. That "proof" is good enough for you. Not for me.

The New York Times is under no obligation to "correct" an error that has not been pointed out to them as an error and for which they believe they have written confirmation that their original report was accurate.

"No one cares whether Clinton argued with the NY Times (which isn't his M.O.) to correct the record at the time."

That is precisely the attitude taken by Al Gore and team Gore when they let the Love Story "story" sit without a challenge. And when they did get around to challenging it they did it the same way Clinton did with his Giustra jet plane trip.

Al Gore didn't claim he and Tipper were the role models for Love Story. He told people in 1997 some Nashville Tennessean reporter way back in 1970 quoted Erich Segal saying that. And, after talking with Al by phone, Erich Segal conveniently remembered 27 years later that must have happened. That is proof enough for Bob Somerby.

Anybody else ever see that 1970 article with its Erich Segal/Al Gore misquote?

"Anybody else ever see that 1970 article with its Erich Segal/Al Gore misquote?"

You're an idiot. You cannot reason logically. 1) As you say,

"Al Gore didn't claim he and Tipper were the role models for Love Story. He told people in 1997 some Nashville Tennessean reporter way back in 1970 quoted Erich Segal saying that."

Precisely.

2) Then the media misquoted him and LIED about what he said to feed the preferred narrative that they wanted to push, namely that Al Gore is a crazy liar.

They misquoted him. All over the place. Even when they knew what he actually said, they LIED about it and twisted his words into to turn him into a ridiculous joke.**********Case in point: there was Bruce Morton, on Inside Politics, reviving the Love Story hoo-hah: MORTON: Then there was Love Story. Gore once claimed the two characters in the movie Love Story were based on his wife Tipper and himself. The author said, “News to me,” and Gore backed off.

Here was the Times’ Rowan Scarborough:

SCARBOROUGH: [Gore] once told reporters he and wife Tipper were the models for the best-selling novel “Love Story”...an assertion author Erich Segal said was untrue.

HANNITY: Then he said, for example, that he and Tipper were the model for Love Story. The author said that that’s not true. And then, of course, inevitably--Chris. Nobody does it better: MATTHEWS: Why does he do this stuff? Bob Wexler, a co-Democrat with this guy, why does Al Gore keep making, a bright guy who makes preposterous claims like he invented the Internet and he starred in Love Story. I’m just asking.

CONNOLLY: But critics say the latest Gore gaffe fit a pattern of personal puffery. Remember, they noted, in 1997 when Gore suggested he and wife Tipper were the models for Erich Segal’s teary “Love Story”? ********http://www.dailyhowler.com/h040299_1.shtml

That's the point. The big bad media twisted his words in their ongoing war to make him look like some sort of delusional nutcase. What the fuck difference does it make who saw that 1970 article?

This is why we're in trouble, because we have idiots like you incapable of logical thought.

Nor do you respond to the point that not only did Gore not respond to and correct the "incorrect" version of the story when it appeared in time, you fail to mention that his staff, when contacted by Maureen Dowd, confirmed the incorrect version, allowing the ridicule to begin.

The question remains. Did Al Gore take the initiative in creating the Nashville article claiming he and Tipper inspired the characters in Love Story?

Whatever Gore might have said or not said, this quote by Matthews shows that he is clearly calling Gore a serial liar and suggesting he has a psychological problem with telling the truth. None of that is justified by any arcane details of what Segal may or may not have said and what Gore said about it.

Relevant Matthews quote from above:

"MATTHEWS: Why does he do this stuff? Bob Wexler, a co-Democrat with this guy, why does Al Gore keep making, a bright guy who makes preposterous claims like he invented the Internet and he starred in Love Story. I’m just asking."

Are you suggesting that Gore made that up? And you want me to dig up that old Nashville article? Blow me.

I'll let some of our nationally known journalists search for it, like Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity (which one of the 3 Stooges is Sean?)

Oh, never mind, that's right. That can't do that because that part of the story has been erased from history.

Let us step back and marvel - in the middle of a serious presidential campaign, national "journalists" were furiously trying to track down Erich Segal to support their LIE that Gore was a psychotic, serial liar. Did they ever try to track down the Nashville article which would probably take them all of 2 seconds to do? No, because they decided not to report that little detail.

Am I suggesting Gore made up the article in the Nashville Tennessean? No. I asked you if he took the initiative in creating it. We don't know. Anything is possible.

We know this from 1970:

"In 1970, Mr. Segal told The Times that the novel's basic story came from one of his students at Yale, whose wife had died, and that the model for Jenny was a woman Mr. Segal had dated in his Harvard days."

We know this from 1997:

"In their phone conversation a few days ago, Mr. Gore reminded Mr. Segal that while Mr. Segal was on his book tour for ''Love Story,'' a reporter for The Nashville Tennessean who knew that Mr. Gore and the author were friends had asked if there was not a little bit of Al Gore in Oliver Barrett. Mr. Segal said yes, there was, but the reporter ''just exaggerated,'' Mr. Segal said. ''He made it to be the local-hero angle.''

Mr. Segal's memory seems to have been prompted by suggestions by Mr. Gore in 1997 of things that happened in 1970 while Mr. Gore was in the Army.

There have been and will continue to be inanities about various candidates in the upcoming campaign. It has always been that way. This nonsense didn't start in 2000 or 1960, there was no golden age of political commentary or reporting.

That said, for the 2016 cycle no reporter or commentator has yet to surpass Bob and his Sanders-has-a-Brooklyn-accent-so-can't-win comment.

He is at best 15%, losing to Clinton by big margins. The voters are rejecting him. Just you die hard Clinton haters think he is a real candidate.

Clinton has been mocked for her southern accent and you're right, she is younger, more experienced, a better campaigner and has a nearly identical voting record to Sanders. I can't see any reason to support Sanders beyond blatant sexism or CDS.

15%? I believe Bubba had about half that in the Summer 1991 polls. He did ok.

As for same voting record, it's hard to tell due to Hillary's relatively short time in the senate. However, comparing their "nearly identical" voting on some key issues... Sanders voted against the Patriot Act and against the against authorizing the war with Iraq. Two of the key votes while Hillary was in office. Let me ask, how'd she vote?

Also their views over the years differed on things like gay marriage (hillary has finally come aboard!), the TPP, the "surge" in Afghanistan,, drone attacks, arming the Syrian rebels, and on and.

So yeah the only reason to support Sanders is sexism,. And the only reason to support Hillary is anti-semitism.

Bill Clinton was not self-identified as a socialist, wasn't from Vermont and had a great deal better campaign skills than Sanders. And he was more mainstream in his policies, as is HRC, something you consider a liability. But that is the crux of why Sanders is unelectable. He is our party's Ben Carson ir Ted Cruz. Your enthusiasm changes nothing about that.

Calling people dumb night feel good, like Sanders makes you feel good, but it doesn't win arguments any more than Sanders can win primaries, much less a general election.

If you guys persist in attacking Clinton you can help give the general election to the Republicans.

He was stupid enough to call himself a socialist. In Europe or Canada he could do that but not in the US.

Being a fringe politician from Vermont he can vote against Patriot act and Iraq but people from larger states with different constituents cannot do that and remain politically viable. That is reality. Blaming more mainstream politicians for protecting their ability to be reelected makes you a child.

You may not like it that someone like Sanders cannot be elected, but that is our country and it takes more than your vote to elect someone.

We got Bush twice and Obama twice because of people like you. I would much rather have Clinton than Sanders because he is less experienced and we have already seen what good intentions and idealism produce without experience and some ability to work with political opponents to achieve common goals. You cannot do that with folks in your own party and there is no evidence Sanders can either. It is an essential skill.

11:31 why are we talking about Sanders? Vegas has him at 2% which means no chance. Those guys don't f around. 538 has spelled it out too from the start. Absolutely no chance at winning. Don't speak or think about Sanders winning because it is something that won't happen. Or do. I guess it's not my business if you waste your time on it so I take it back. Go for it.

Question for the die hard Clinton supporters, can I at least wait for Sanders to campaign before ruling him out? Is he another McGovern? Is he not as politically savvy as Bill? Is he too socialist for most Americans? Or too Brooklyn accented (!?!?!). Does he have no chance, none at all?

I have no idea, neither do you, that's why we have a campaign season, primaries and voters.

I know, some of you think we should just let Vegas bookmakers select our candidates. Others seem to feel that even considering another candidate is sexist (one wonders if that would apply to Warren).

I'm hoping most of us feel otherwise and will at least give Sanders a listen.

Sanders may say interesting things but he has ruled himself out of the race by declaring himself to be a socialist. He has no chance whatsoever. And yes, those of us who have ever witnessed an election before know he cannot win. He probably won't even win Vermont.

The polls are saying this. He is so far behind Clinton that his campaign is a sham. The problem is that he can do real damage to Clinton by running. Please address that issue and explain why you think it is OK for someone like Sanders to weaken the likely Democratic candidate in the general election.

Warren has stated repeatedly that she will not run. She and Clinton have discussed issues and Clinton is advocating her interests using Warren's policy ideas. Warren is not running.

The problem with sexism is the suggestion that it is necessary to find another candidate when there is no demonstrable difference between Sanders and Clinton and should be no need to find someone else, beyond Clinton's gender. If she were male, men wouldn't be looking so hard to find someone else, anyone else. Warren seems like a good alternative largely because she isn't a strong candidate. If she had a perceived chance of winning, the anyone-but-Warren folks would crawl out of the woodwork and we'd be hearing all about how she lied about being American Indian and is too aggressive to be president. That's how sexism works.

If Sanders were someone like Biden, with foreign relations experience and a track record showing electability and strength in prior campaigns, you might have a point. Sanders is a fringe candidate being used to camouflage attacks against Clinton by the left, and those attacks can damage our party's ability to win in the Fall.

Most of us feel that Clinton has earned her chance and the large majority of prospective voters (based on repeated polling) want to vote for her. Bookmakers don't dictate outcomes, they pay attention to measurement of those outcomes. People don't want Sanders -- they want Clinton.

If Clinton supporters seem a bit upset about the focus on Sanders, it is because of what happened in 2008. That is NOT going to happen again.

So we shouldn't even listen to Sanders because you, Bob and the media have declared him a crank without a chance and Bob's offended by his Brooklyn accent. Thanks, i'll obey!!

You said Clinton supporters are upset about "the focus on Sanders?" What are you talking about? His announcement was buried deep in the NYtimes, yet when GOP candidates announced they got page 1, even ones who polled lower than Sanders.

Anyway, maybe browse this piece from the Columbia Journalism Review and then re-read your post.

http://www.cjr.org/analysis/bernie_sanders_underdog.php

Here's a bit of it:"The trouble with this consensus ["Sanders is a crank who can't win"] is the paucity of evidence to support it. 'This crank actually could win' is nearer the mark. But having settled on a prophecy, the media went about covering Sanders so as to fulfill it. The Times, for example, buried his announcement on page A21, even though every other candidate who had declared before then had been put on the front page above the fold. Sanders’s straight-news story didn’t even crack 700 words, compared to the 1,100 to 1,500 that Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton got. As for the content, the Times’ reporters declared high in Sanders’s piece that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination and that Clinton was all but a lock. None of the Republican entrants got the long-shot treatment, even though Paul, Rubio, and Cruz were generally polling fifth, seventh, and eighth among Republicans before they announced."

11:13. You don't know "the truth" but thanks for the advice. I think I'll wait to see what he has to say about his proposed policies, how he campaigns, and how he deals with the attacks from the media and the Clinton campaign - then I'll decide.

Funny, the media, and self described "liberals" are doing to Sanders EXACTLY what Bob accuses them of doing to Clinton. Starting a meme and writing stories based on that "he's a crank who can't win." Even Bob is jumping in...

Can you imagine the torrent of rambling posts Bob would type if some pundit said Clinton can't win because of her age or accent?

Where is the lengthy front-page report in the NY Times describing some innocent speech or charity activity engaged in by Sanders as if it were a scandal? What has anyone here accused Sanders of except being incapable of winning because of (1) his age, (2) his geographical localism and lack of broader appeal, (3) his fringe party identification?

You said "crank". I don't think anyone else has said that here.

You need to think about the difference between legitimate and illegitimate criticism. No one here is saying anything about Clinton's age -- pro or con. She is 5 years younger than Sanders and demonstrably up to the job based on her activity as Secretary or State.

11:44, see today's NYTimes a fluff piece about Clinton and her Mom. Note an NPR reported claimed Sanders had duel citizenship the other day. So he'll get BS flung at him too, and we'll see how he responds.

As for no one here called him a crank, i'm in no mood to review the posts, but someone called him an idiot and as for his age, he's 6 years older than HRC so if she's not too old then neither is he.

I have to tell you, i was not overly impressed with her job as sec of state, i thought she was way too hawkish and at times embarrassing. Such as her "we came, we saw, he died" comment about Ghadaffi. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-on-qaddafi-we-came-we-saw-he-died/

Almost as macho as Bush's "bring it on" and from our top diplomat. What the....?

That NPR reporter was Diane Rehm and she got the info off an internet website. She has apologized for her error and said she should have asked him about his dual citizenship instead of assuming the info was correct. She gave him a lengthy chance to correct the record on her show, which has a pretty large audience for NPR.

An idiot is not a "crank" and I was the one who called him that, based on this campaign he is running. He should know better. In mid life 6 years isn't much but at the end of the lifespan it makes a huge difference (it also makes a hugh difference in early childhood, as is perhaps more obvious).

The most embarrassing thing in her tenure as Sec of State in my opinion was the general slavering over the death of Osama bin Laden. Revenge is never pretty but it seems to be obligatory.

Here's the point I was trying to make, which you apparently missed. It doesn't matter what Sanders says. He has less experience than Obama did. People with good intentions but little experience are a bad bet. Sanders has more liabilities than Obama did. On what basis can you expect that he would be able to realize any promise he might make? What can he possibly say that would offset that utter lack of experience, lack of connections, lack of understanding of world issues, lack of leverage outside Vermont? How would he be able to get things done?

Sanders beats Clinton??? He doesn't have the money or the influence. But it's true we should listen and at least give him a chance. But he doesn't have a chance though. That is true. That's on one of the hard things about our system. It's rigged. We are just pawns. We don't have any say. It's an illusion, a myth that we do.

We all have one vote. It is frustrating that the vote of a reasonable person gets cancelled out by the vote of an uninformed or careless or mistaken voter, but that is how our system works.

To get elected, you must convince a large enough group of people to vote for you. Sanders doesn't have a chance because he cannot do that. In addition to having ideas and policies that appeal to people, you must create name recognition, address criticisms of other candidates, motivate voters to vote, and participate in debates and public functions. Sanders doesn't have the organization to do that effectively. He doesn't have the nationwide campaign experience, the support network, the staff. He hasn't laid the foundation, done the groundwork, accumulated the following outside his home state.

All of that add up to -- he hasn't paid his dues. He isn't prepared. Why is this necessary? Because if he were to be elected, he would have to put together a cabinet and staff and conduct a coherent foreign policy and interact with the opposition party, and deal with numerous public functions and the press, and someone without the experience of a successful campaign isn't going to be able to do that either.

The process weeds out the incompetent. Sanders seems like a nice, intelligent senator, but he doesn't have the chops to be president. Maybe he is running for the cabinet, but he could have done that more effectively by endorsing Clinton and advising her (as Warren has done) instead of by weakening her bid -- which she has EARNED through lengthy, effective, diligent hard work on the national scene over several decades.

12:55 Yes we all have one vote, it sucks that people don't want to vote for who you support. They have the nerve to want to consider others. They're just not smart like you are. I mean you know who is the best without worrying about what others may offer. Yeah, democracy works best when only your favored candidates run. Got it.

12:42 "It doesn't matter what Sanders says. He has less experience than Obama did."

Sanders was a Senator for 8 years and a congressman for 16. So he has more experience in elected office than Obama and Clinton had combined in 2008.

He was also an elected mayor of Burlington for 8 years.

But apparently i don't know anything, since anybody who doesn't support Clinton (which i, as yet, do not) are clearly careless, misinformed or mistaken.

This is the TRUE Clinton derangement syndrome.

"I'd like to hear what the other candidate has to say before ruling him out."

Clinton had no chops when she became a US Senator. She was broke and in debt. She may have known how to cook chops. She may have known how to make cookies. If Mrs. Rubio becomes first lady we will no longer have to worry about her being a menace to drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists in Florida. She may know how to fish or cut bait.Just because she was a cheerleader for Dolphins doesn't make her a Flipper-flopper or a dinghy.

Do you really think being senator from Vermont is the same as succeeding in Chicago politics?

Do you think 8 years as First Lady are not experience? She already knew the world leaders and global issues before becoming Secretary of State -- she had relationships in place in Congress before becoming a senator. Sanders has 24 years of the same thing, being ignored because he was outside any party structure while trying to assert the interests of a small, inconsequential state.

If Hillary were not running, no one would be paying any more attention to him than they are to Lincoln Chaffee, someone he has a lot in common with.

Absolutely. I lived in NY when she ran and that had nothing to do with why people supported her. She is liked and admired by people who meet her and is a solid Democrat, which is what her constituents wanted. And she did a great job. I lived in White Plains.

If Hillary were not to be nominated (the equivalent of LBJ deciding not to run), the stronger candidates in the Democratic party would enter the race. They currently have too much sense to challenge Hillary -- only someone like Sanders who doesn't care about the welfare of the Democratic party and winning the election (as evidenced by the way he has conducted his own political career), would enter the race knowing he can only weaken Democratic chances next Fall.

People who are behind Sanders are not behind Sanders -- they are opposing Hillary for reasons they do not wish to specify. It is pretty ugly and Sanders is deluded or irresponsible to allow himself to be a shield for whatever their motives are.

Remember that LBJ stepped aside. Hillary has not done that. Kennedy won California but there is no evidence he would have won the election. The idealists were with Eugene McCarthy, if you want to get misty-eyed.

Maybe @9:33 is saying that we should humor all the fringe candidates in case our frontrunner is assassinated at the last minute?

During Obama's campaign, such a suggestion would have been greeted as a threat. There were cries for HIllary to drop out from the beginning -- no one suggested she stay in in case Obama were assassinated. No one said it was good she was there in case something were to happen to him. So, why now?

Shouldn't we have a backup candidate in case Sanders gets Alzheimer's or has a stroke? Oh, wait, we do! It is Lincoln Chaffee. Why aren't the guys rallying behind him? Because he's a joke -- well so is Sanders.

Remember what happened last time a candidate projected himself as a blank slate for progressive dreams and promised hope, change and pie in the sky? He's back....

Somerby was defending an old, white male writer, Richard Cohen, against charges by a clueless Clinton supporter and online commenter that Cohen's writing was sexist.

Bob knows sexism. Sexism was a friend of his family fortune. And Richard Cohen was not being sexist.

Bob also knows writing. Fuzzy and otherwise. Therefore Bob needed to make a point about Clinton supporters based on reading an online comment.

Applying that comment to all Clinton supporters all the time is wrong. Just like applying the one time decision by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore to the outcome of the 2000 election ignores the two year long War on Gore.

For the record, we are not voting for Rubio. But we do see the melting of our intellectual culture. And it starts with forbidden conversations. In our view the wage gap is not a measure of discrimination.

There is more to this post than meets the eye. Bob truly is concerned that poor young Marco Rubio is having his roots, as the poor son of a bartender and hotel maid, mistreated much like Al Gore, the son of a Senator and a bargain antique buyer and wholesale bargain shoe shopper.

Bob wrote a whole post back in 1999 decrying one ambiguous sentence of a Washington Post piece on Al Gore, Jr. Here is a key paragraph from that piece which outlines the similarity between what is being done to these two fine men.

"Al obtained his learner's permit when he was 14, and quickly developed a reputation for reckless driving. "He was constantly running us into hog feeders and running us off the road," Steve Armistead recalled. One morning, as Gore was returning from a summer school class in Lebanon (there was always another lesson to be learned, his father insisted), he tried to speed past a truck on a narrow road near the big house, but the truck weaved to the left and sent him upside down into a ditch. Al escaped unhurt, but his father's 1962 Chevy Impala was totaled. His daredevil streak was evident in other ways: Water-skiing at Cove Hollow on Center Hill Lake, where his father kept a speedboat, he loved to stand on his head on the outboard motor."

--Sanders' campaign's net effect can only be to harm Clinton, the inevitable nominee: NEEDS EVIDENCE

Sorry, Sanders hopefuls: He cannot win. Never.

Sorry, Clintonistas: It's just not true that Sanders can only hurt the Democrats' ultimate general election chances. If you'd be willing to actually entertain debate about issues, you'd see that a candidate to the left of Clinton could actually help her, help the press, and help the people -- even if and when he inevitably bows out and endorses her.

But the Clintonistas feel they must pile loathing and hatred on anyone to the left.

Frankly, *that* attitude is as likely to alienate voters as anything else.

I am enthusiastically supporting Hillary Clinton. I think she's great and I have no problem with Bernie throwing his hat into the ring.

But. There is a great deal of difference between supporting Bernie because you think he represents your interests better than the other guy, and sliming Hillary Clinton with the same recycled ratfucking trash that's been thrown at her for the past 20 some years. Which is what was done to her in 2008. I hope the geniuses who gave us Obama are not the same ones boarding the Bernie Express.

As someone who has witnessed quite a few presidential elections in my lifetime, let me assure you folks that the D's are never in my lifetime going to nominate anyone to "the left" of Hillary. Trust me, I'm usually right about these things. \

Senator John Kerry - right out of the box, first thing he does is put his military service front and center (was that to burnish his liberal credentials?), and it didn't take long for Karl Rove to make Kerry eat those medals.

Obama campaigned in DEMOCRATIC primaries, praising Ronald Reagan and advocating SS "reform" and he got cast as the more progressive?!?\

Hello, welcome to the USA, Planet Earth in 2015. There are only 2 political parties, one of which has gone insane. And guess what, roughly half the country likes insane.

I think mm has it right. I also think the Democratic party cannot counter the right's insanity by courting the insane wing of its own party. Unfortunately, they are attracted to Sanders like moths to a flame.

While these additional Democratic candidates are unlikely to win nomination, I think they make Clinton appear weaker because they suggest she cannot scare off trivial competition.

There was a reason why Obama wanted to gain nomination by acclamation instead of letting Hillary's votes be counted. Now, that same reason applies to Clinton and says something about her stature within her own party. It is an affront that these fleas are hopping around trying to gain the limelight when the party should be embracing her candidacy. The smarter candidates are waiting for their turn down the road. The ones left over are the clowns of our party as surely as the Republican primary is full of its own clowns. They shouldn't be doing this and I hope Clinton will remember that when she is elected.

We don't know whether Obama would have actually won the nomination or not because the roll call at the convention was never completed. Delegates won by Clinton were pressured to abandon their commitment and vote for Obama instead. There was a very real feeling that the convention was being railroaded and that Obama was being shoved down the throats of Clinton delegates. If you were unaware of this, you were no doubt an Obama supporter.

It takes some gall to claim that Obama won the nomination when he did not win the popular vote in primaries but rather manipulated the caucuses to produce victories in largely red states. Most Democrats were for Clinton. In that sense, Obama was shoved down the throats of Democratic voters too.

Some went along with that in the name of historical progress in race relations. Others left the party (e.g., PUMAs) or didn't vote in the general election. There was a lot of bitterness over what happened. Some are not "over it" yet, on both sides -- hence at least some of the support for Sanders.

There are several of us who advocate for the Howler in the combox. I'm glad mm is here sticking up for Clinton and pushing back against trolls. People who denigrate Somerby make it clear they are not here as any kind of liberal or progressive, so I have to ask, what are you? My guess would be that you are a conservative pretending to attack Clinton "from the left" while disrupting discussion in one of the longstanding liberal blogs.

Somerby doesn't need defending from any of us. Most of his advocates don't read the comments because of people like you. That doesn't stop them from reading the blog itself.

I'm going to support Clinton when she inevitable makes it through the primary into the general election. It won't be a timid support either: the unacceptable alternative is a GOP candidate.

But until then, I do want to hear what Sanders says. I do want Clinton and Sanders to debate.

For now, I just wish the stupider members of my party wouldn't pretend there's some sort of symmetry between the GOP and the Democrats as far as 'insane' wings. On the one hand, it's just false: there is no unhinged 'left' policy counterpart to the nonsense offered by the far right. On the other hand, it's a fine example of the usual deadly Democratic infighting which is utterly self-damaging.

Hey, not fair to claim that you support Hillary while expressing such lukewarm enthusiasm that someone would think you were a Republican.

Calling those of us who support Hillary now (and in 2008), the stupider members of the party isn't cool. Nor is using the term douche -- why not just call the people you dislike pussies? Women just love hearing that kind of talk. And you wonder why we call Sanders camouflage for sexist jerks and bitter Obama staffers who can't let go of their dislike of a historic female candidate.

Yes, this infighting is damaging, but we aren't the ones doing it. You seem to think there is nothing wrong with forcing Clinton to divert resources to address Sanders instead of using them in the Fall to defeat a Republican. If she were to lose in the Fall you'd probably claim she did a bad job campaigning. Cause that's how you guys roll.

In the 60s, the hippies were majorly sexist, second only to the SDS/Peace & Freedom/Anarchist/Socialist jerks who relegated women to the kitchen while they discussed important stuff. Some socialists deserve to be punched.

You still haven't answered what you think Sanders is accomplishing with his campaign, beyond stroking his ego and providing safe haven for misogynists.

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